Rotterdam, 1/27.

"Palestinian-Danish actor Omar Shargawi debuts as a writer-director with Ma salama Jamil (Go with Peace Jamil), in all likelihood one of the first Dogme-inspired films mostly spoken in Arabic," writes Boyd van Hoeij at european-films.net. "The film about two small warring factions of Muslims, one Shi'ite, the other Sunni, is set in Denmark but could be set anywhere - even in predominantly Muslim countries, as the film is not interested in culture clashes or adapting to life in a non-Muslim country. Instead, it focuses on the age-old battle to break the cycle of violence that begets violence, and as such, the film is a promising if overlong debut."

"A few years have past since the last Appleseed movie, so with more powerful technology available you'd expect greatly improved visuals" in Appleseed: Ex Machina," writes Ardvark at Twitch. "Both movies have been very ambitious in what they tried to achieve and both have successes and failures." Still, "If you liked the first film I'd be really surprised if you didn't like this one."

Also, Dai-Nipponjin: "While Cloverfield is easily (and often) described as Godzilla meets The Blair Witch Project, this film is far more original and therefore harder to describe. With its wit and focus on media-manipulation, Godzilla meets Network comes close though. It's also damn funny."

"For the first time in nearly 20 years, domestic films in Japan have outsold foreign imports at the box office," notes Genevieve Yue at Reverse Shot. "Adding to this the fact that Naomi Kawase's The Mourning Forest, Kobayashi Masahiro's The Rebirth, and Takeshi Kitano's Glory to the Filmmaker! all won major prizes at international film festivals in the past year, and it would seem that Japanese cinema is experiencing its own rebirth of sorts (though significant developments have long been underway). For all the renewed vitality, however, the three films are notably elegiac in tone or subject matter. In each there's a sense of aftermath, but distance doesn't necessarily bring clarity or well-being."

Posted by dwhudson at January 27, 2008 2:25 PM